Ten months after the murder of taxi driver Roopchand Darshan, his family says the police have showed no interest in finding whoever is responsible.
Darshan, 24, of Enmore, was shot and killed in March last year. He was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car at the Strathspey Railway Embankment, East Coast Demerara.
Police had previously believed the man was a victim of a carjacking but nothing was taken from his car and his money and cellphone were handed over to his family.
The police were also informed that Darshan was involved in an argument with a man a few days before he was killed. The man had apparently lashed him across the head and told him he was not finished with him.
However, after July, Latchmie Darshan said the police stopped contacting her about her son’s murder and whenever she visited the Cove and John Police Station to enquire about the investigation, they would promise to call her.
“They never did. They don’t seem interested in this matter,” she said.
“It has been 10 months and we ain’t hearing nothing about what really happen to our son. Nobody wants to talk. It’s not like he was a problematic child, to say he would be involved in any problem. If he ain’t home, he at work,” she added.
Darshan was found in his vehicle with a gunshot wound to the head around 10.50 pm on March 29. The police, his mother said, had told her he was shot from behind. She said they believed that his killer(s) was sitting behind him in the car when they shot him.
Taxi drivers working at a nearby base in area recalled two young men exiting a minibus and soliciting Darshan to drop them into the Enmore New Scheme. One driver said he saw Darshan driving out of the scheme a while after he picked up the two men but he could not make out if anyone else was in the car because the scheme did not have street lights.
It was the last time Darshan was seen alive.
Darshan’s mother said he would work up to around 9 pm and on the night he was killed she had called him home after the time passed. “I went out on the veranda and saw his car park up by the taxi service and I call him and tell him to come home because it was late and he said he was coming in just now. He didn’t come though and we didn’t hear anything until a boy come and tell us that he get killed,” she said.
“I tell he don’t go to work and he still went,” she said, breaking down into tears. Her husband, who was also in tears, said they “are concerned about what really happened to our son,” and thought that the police were dragging their feet in finding the killer.
The fact that the killer(s) did not take the man’s car and money shows the motive was not robbery but murder, his mother noted. “They [the police] ain’t lost so they don’t care,” she said, adding that she is hoping that one day she will get justice for his killing. “If they don’t help us, then it is in God’s hands,” she added.
